Investigation of Front Seat Occupants' Acetabulum Injury in Front Impact
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Investigation of front seat occupants' acetabulum injury in front impact Shinichi Hayashi Ryuuji Ootani Tsuyoshi Matsunaga Taisuke Watanabe Chinmoy Pal Shigeru Hirayama Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. Japan Paper Number 17-0207 ABSTRACT Among the proposed amendments to the US-NCAP announced on Dec. 2015, a new acetabulum injury evaluation along with the next-generation THOR dummy has been included [1]. In relation to this topic, numerous research tests and studies are already being conducted by NHTSA. However, 29% of those tests showed that acetabulum injury has occurred due to tensile load rather than a compressive load from the femur. Therefore, in this research, we investigated whether similar injury mechanism actually occurred in real world accidents using NASS-CDS (CY2000-10) data. It is observed that 95% of acetabulum injuries in real world accidents were injuries accompanied by fractures, and 82% of these injuries were related to interaction with the instrument panel. This suggests that most of the acetabulum injuries occur by a compressive load and they are far less likely to occur with tensile load. In addition, by analyzing the mechanism of injury occurrence of the research tests, there are the two influential factors for the difference between the crash test results and real world accidents. They are i) the difference between the THOR dummy and the human body around the hip joint and ii) the problem of acetabulum injury criterion. In the future, further research is necessary in order to propose a more appropriate injury risk evaluation. INTRODUCTION Related to the injuries at and around the hip joint of vehicle occupants during a frontal crash, a number of research reports were already published. Dakin, et.al found that the number of hip injury is highly dependent on angle of impact [2]. Based on PMHS (Post Mortem Human Surrogate) experiments, Rupp, et.al reported the tolerance levels of fractures occurring at the hip joint and the connecting femur bone [3]. Martin, et.al analyzed real world accidents related to Narrow offset and Oblique Frontal Crash accidents and compared the pelvic injuries of THOR-NT dummy with human body [4]. Kuwabara, et.al compared acetabulum loads of the THOR dummy, HybridⅢ dummy and THUMS. And, they analyzed the mechanism of acetabulum injury by numerical analysis using detailed vehicle model [5]. However, there are few published research works addressing the consistency between research tests and real world accidents, especially focusing on the mechanism of acetabulum injury. Therefore, in this study, we focused our analysis on (i) acetabulum injury of NHTSA research tests using THOR dummy, (ii) acetabulum injury in real world accidents and (iii) the difference of injury mechanism between the research tests and the real world accidents. Based on the above mentioned background research works, NHTSA proposed the introduction of 1) the Oblique test in addition to the conventional Full Frontal Rigid Barrier test and 2) a new dummy THOR with improved biofidelity to be used in the frontal crash tests in the revised US-NCAP draft announced in Dec. 2015. Compared to the current HybidⅢ dummies, using the THOR dummy, more injuries can be evaluated and the acetabulum injury is one of them. In response to numerous research studies being conducted by NHTSA, we in this research (i) changed the viewpoint from conventional research, (ii) analyzed the frequency and mechanism of occurrence of acetabulum injury in real world and vehicle crash tests and finally (iii) carried out a comparison of them. Hayashi 1 1. Analysis of NHTSA research tests 1.1 List of tests Injuries for the Driver and Passenger occupants in Left Oblique, Right Oblique and Full Frontal Rigid Barrier tests using the THOR dummy are analyzed in detail. Those tests having failure in data recording or not having proper test reports are excluded. Data selection for the present analysis is as shown in Table 1. In the following sections, Left Oblique will be denoted by “LO”, Right Oblique by “RO” and Full Frontal Rigid Barrier by “FRB”, respectively. Table1. Selection of NHTSA research tests (Refer to Appendix A) Abbreviation Occupants(side) Number of tests Oblique Left LO Driver (left) 22 Passenger (right) 16 Right RO Driver (left) 8 Passenger (right) Full Frontal Rigid Barrier FRB Driver (left) 5 1.2 Acetabulum load measurement location and evaluation method Using the THOR dummy, it is possible to measure three axial loads of the acetabulum. As shown in Fig. 1, the load cells are highlighted by indicated within the dotted box. The Acetabulum injury value, as proposed in new US-NCAP, is based on the total resultant value of three axial loads recorded by the load cell [1]. Figure 1. Acetabulum load measurement position 1.3 Proportion of injuries exceeding IARV in each body region Table 2 shows the lists of body regions, injuries, IARV (Injury Assessment Reference Value) and the corresponding criteria for serious injury. We examined the percentage of injuries of each body region with respect to the total number of injuries, only for those injuries which exceeded the IARV as shown in Fig.2. Hayashi 2 Table 2 List of body region, injury, IARV and criteria for serious injury Body Injury Unit IARV Criteria for serious injury when above IARV Region HIC15 700 11.2% risk of AIS 3+ injury [6] Head BrIC 0.87 50% risk of AIS 3+ brain injury[7] Neck Nij 1.0 22% risk of AIS 3+ injury[6] Upper Chest deflection mm 53 -[8] Chest Lower Chest deflection mm 46 -[8] Abdomen Abdomen deflection mm 90 50% risk of AIS 3+ injury.[9] 25% risk of a hip fracture (AIS 2+, or AIS 3+ if open Acetabulum N 3280 fracture) [4] [10] Femur N 9040 25% risk of AIS 2+ injury [11] Lower Proximal Tibia Axial extremity N 5600 25% risk of AIS 2+ injury [11] Compression Distal Tibia Axial N 5200 25% risk of AIS 2+ injury [11] Compression For those cases where the IARV is exceeded, 16% were acetabulum related injury. The number of data exceeding IARV in each category of LO, RO and FRB is shown in Appendix B. Figure 2. Proportion of injury of each body region exceeding IARV (except for upper extremity) 1.4 Magnitude of resultant load and occurrence frequency of acetabulum injuries in research tests Fig. 3 (a-c) show the frequency distributions of acetabulum resultant loads (including those cases below the IARV level) in left and right lower extremities for LO, RO and FRB groups. The horizontal axis shows the resultant load with groups of 1000N increments and the vertical axis indicates the corresponding frequency or the percentage of those groups. For example, with the LO Driver Right leg, the number of tests where the maximum acetabulum resultant load is within the range of 1001-2000N is 8. The total number of tests is 22 as indicated in Table 1. So the ratio in this range of 1001-2000N, is 8/22(36%). Although, in general, one may expect that the acetabulum resultant load of the near-side passenger for the cases of larger intrusion of the instrument panel to be always high, but such tendency was not very evident from the distributions of Fig. 3(a-c). Hence, there is a possibility that only a compressive load transferred from the instrument panel to the hip joint through femur, is not always the main influencing factor for the occurrence of acetabulum injury. Also, the percentage of tests where the maximum acetabulum resultant load exceeded IARV(3280 N) level was 34%. Hayashi 3 (a) LO (b) RO (c) FRB Figure 3. Frequency distribution of acetabulum resultant load 1.5 Proportion of x, y, z components in Acetabulum resultant load Next, Fig.4 shows the proportions of each individual component (Fx, Fy, Fz) at the instant of time when the resultant load of acetabulum reaches maximum. The horizontal axis corresponds to each test and vertical axis shows the proportion of each individual component (Fx, Fy, Fz). It is observed that the percentage of cases with Fx as the highest load is quite high, about 60% of total cases and 71% within in the cases which exceed IARV level. Hence, in following part of our study, we focused on acetabulum Fx component. (a) Right leg Hayashi 4 (b) Left leg Figure 4. Ratio of acetabulum load 1.6 Frequency of tensile / compressive load occurrence in acetabulum Fx The result of classifying the Fx component at the maximum of the resultant load into compression / tension is shown in Fig. 5 (a) for each collision type and occupant. We found the following trends: i) Near side occupant of LO/RO: compression cases are as high as 70% or more (solid line frame in Fig. 5a). ii) Far side occupant of LO/RO and FRB: tension cases are as high as 55% or more (broken line frame in Fig. 5a) Generally speaking, the magnitude of instrument panel’s intrusion is less for far side impact than near side impact. For the case(i), there will be a strong interaction between the knee and instrument panel with the forward movement of the pelvis and it results in a large compressive input load to the acetabulum from the knee through the thigh as illustrated by Fig. 6. On other hand, for the case(ii), as the magnitude of instrument panel’s intrusion is small, the interaction between the knee and instrument panel would be weaker. So, due to inertia of the femur and the lower part of the leg, the forward movement of the thigh is not fully restrained by a less intruded instrument panel. This leads to inertia induced tensile load in acetabulum.